


when it crumbles

by buries



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Gen, Season/Series 04, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 07:12:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/659290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buries/pseuds/buries
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>it doesn't take long for the dam to break</i>. or the one where bonnie snaps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when it crumbles

**Author's Note:**

> written for upupa_epops @ the women's comment ficathon on livejournal. i apparently have a lot of bonnie bennett feelings; this is all based on speculation and what i'd love for bonnie to do in the show. title from adele's _skyfall_. ♥
> 
> the prompt was:  
>  _Tape ain't gonna fix it_  
>  Honey, it ain't gonna stick  
> Tape ain't gonna fix it  
> Honey, it ain't gonna stick to you  
> Six kinds of glue  
> Won't hold you, won't hold you

It doesn’t take long for the dam to break.

 

 

“You’ll save her,” he says, like it’s something she can actually do. “If you do this - You can save her from eternal misery.”

She’s a fool to believe him, but he listens when no one else does. Where her voice is an echo, her body a mere shadow, he sees her for who she is, a strong, tall, vibrant light full of energy that almost sets the room alight. She believes him like the fool she is, since what’s a lonely witch to do?

 

 

“You need to focus on school,” her dad says, like he cares, like school is the enemy when ten immortal beings are roaming around the town, ready to snap the bones of innocent people beneath their fingers for pleasure. “I don’t want you getting involved in this. Not any more.”

“I can’t leave it,” she says, pressing her hands against the table. She leans closer, hoping to imprint the importance of her involvement, that despite all that she has lost, she’s needed, like a necessary piece on a chessboard. “They’re my family.”

“So am I,” Rudy says. “And I want you to be alive when this is over.”

“That’s the thing,” Bonnie shakes her head. “It’ll never be over.”

 

 

What Grams never told her was there is a push and pull between witch and human - and that the human never wins.

 

 

Her father’s life hangs by a thread. The flames lick the highest points of the building, climbing the walls like ants, clinging to every surface like it’s wallpaper. It never burns, but Bonnie feels the heat. Nose itching and her fingers heated, she curls her palms into fists as she chants, as Shane looks on in pride, as her father, in another corner of the town, falls to his feet.

It’s a mistake, that she realises it, that Shane’s little plan of sacrificing another twelve people - of random selection, or natural, she doesn’t really care - involves the lives of those she cares about. With the face of her grandmother, of her mother, of her father twisted in a heap on the floor of her family home, the flames flicker out, pushing into the walls of the house as though they were sucked in by air.

Eyes open, Shane’s face dulls in disappointment, in wonderment of where the heat had gone. “Bonnie -”

With her voice gone, and her bones feeling like water, Bonnie doesn’t exactly walk away. She can’t; not really.

 

 

She tries to trick her father into leaving, in wrapping her mother up like he used to, and finding a cocoon to bury themselves into until this war is over.

She forgot how stubborn Bennetts (or Hopkins, they're one in the same) were. There aren’t many of them left.

 

 

“You can’t do this, Bonnie,” Elena gasps, voice pleading, like it used to before she felt cold to the touch. Bonnie doesn’t touch her any more, hasn’t felt the lithe arms of Elena Gilbert push across her back and pull her into the tightest embrace one can imagine. She once said she’d never let go, but Bonnie’s never felt so far out to sea as she does right now.

With oceans between them, Bonnie sneers, glancing up and down over Elena’s frame. “I am,” she says. “I have to.”

“You have a choice,” Elena says.

“I made mine.”

 

 

Trust is a fickle thing, but for Bonnie, it’s as hard and as strong as stone. Shane tries to crumble it, to manipulate it like dough between his rough fingertips, but she knows better. Feeling herself mould out of shape, to fit the silhouette of someone she never wants to be, she finds herself fall out of love with him.

It was never a romantic love. Respect, and being seen, can go along way, and for a girl still figuring out who she is, feeling her bones shift awkwardly underneath her flesh, she’s an easy material to form into something that he wants her to be. Falling into the palm of his hand, she’s merely a piece, a witch, rather than a human, and to him, she has no face.

Shane, with his curly hair and big, wide, trusting eyes, gave her the world on a golden platter. She just never thought it’d be one that’s covered in blood.

 

 

The stitches are weakening among the pressure, of the push and pull between two camps. Shane’s eyes are wide as he tries to capture her gaze across the broad expanse of a table, hand almost reaching out to touch her own, but she stands back straight, teeth almost bared like an animal, as she looks him dead in the eye and sees someone else’s face.

Grams’ screams pierce her ears, splitting his skin wide open at the corner of his nose and the heart of his ear. Shane fights against it, eyes still wide, pleading, like as if he’s human, like as though he’s not a monster like the rest of them. The pale flesh of his cheek melts, peeling off to reveal a layer of a sharp cheekbone of a much darker tone; her grandmother appears before her, pleading, screaming, eyes shut as tightly as she remembers them last almost too many moons ago.

His mouth opens, but it’s like rubber, and all she can see is how the bones beneath his flesh seem to soften, as though the hardness underneath simply loses its grip on reality. She cannot kill him, not like he has done so to too many people, to fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, children, but she can make him feel it. As the witches made Grams feel it, she can pull his flesh apart to have it never tear in reality.

For as strong as he pretends to be, he crumbles, like sand under a hard wave. Bonnie doesn’t blink, doesn’t breathe, as she feels the fire of her anger lick at her fingertips.

“You ever use her against me again and I _will_ kill you,” she says, finding her voice a growl. Her lips move on their own accord as her mind stays focused on the one single image of her grandmother’s face.

She leaves Shane collapsed on the floor.

 

 

“If we’re going after Silas, we’re doing it my way.”

“I wasn’t aware there _was_ a your way,” Damon almost rolls his eyes. His lip curves up, like he’s the funniest guy in the world, but Stefan merely glances at him, mouth an unimpressed line. The only one who seems to find it humorous is Damon’s shadow.

“If you want to live, you’ll do it my way,” she says more firmly.

“Listen to Bonnie,” Elena comes towards Damon, hand slipping into the crook of his elbow. He turns into her, face soft, eyes baby blue. He almost looks human, like he cares. “Please.”

It’s moments that they don’t have in which he takes to glance at Elena, have his eyes roam over her face like he’s never seen her, before it lands back onto Bonnie. “Fine,” he says, making an effort to sound as unimpressed as one can be. “But if it fails, we’re going with my plan.”

“It won’t fail.”

“Not like I haven’t heard that one before.”

 

 

She realised long before she’s merely an expendable pawn.

But sometimes expendable pawns have aces up their sleeves.


End file.
